Kurt Kauper: Paintings 2001-2007

According to The New York Times, It would be easy to read Kurt Kauper’s nude portraits of the former hockey players Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson as a rote comment on the fragile state of American (or Canadian) masculinity. They work better as an erotic and personal tribute, one that draws on the artist’s childhood in a Bruins-worshiping Boston suburb; the neo-Classical figuration of Jacques-Louis David; and the overt sensuality of pre-Stonewall ‘athletic’ films. This slim, beautifully produced, bright yellow linen-bound exhibition catalogue with tipped-on cover image features some of the most strangely arresting male nudes on canvas today. Ranging from life-sized, full-frontal portraits of a nude Cary Grant at home in his suave, mid-century-movie-star manse (2001-2003) to the artist’s most recent portraits of god-like, real-life Canadian hockey stars of the 1960s and 70s, this volume presents work that is perverse, liberated and rightly hilarious alongside essays by Wayne Koestenbaum and Pepe Karmel.